President Trump’s advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is leaving Washington this weekend for a trip that will include an audience with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, Vanity Fair reported. It will be his first face-to-face with the Saudi leader since the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in October, which U.S. intelligence reportedly believes the prince orchestrated.

Kushner is reported to have a close relationship with the Crown Prince, also known as MBS. The New York Times reported late last year that the two had “private, informal conversations,” which concerned U.S. officials. Kushner reportedly remained a defender of MBS within the White House, even after Khashoggi’s death. The presidential advisor has reportedly pushed for the Saudis to receive a $110 billion military arms deal.

The latest visit, which will also touch down in five other Arab countries, comes as the Trump administration reportedly seeks a deal to sell nuclear technology to the Saudis. It also comes in the lead-up to Israeli elections. Kushner has long promised a peace plan, which is expected to involve the Saudi leadership. The public presentation of the plan is being delayed until after Israeli elections in April.

A day after Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu orchestrated the return of the supporters of the racist rabbi Meir Kahane to the Israeli Knesset, the American Jewish Committee, a major establishment Jewish organization, condemned the maneuver.

“The views of Otzma Yehudit are reprehensible,” the AJC said in a statement, tweeted at the end of the business day on Thursday. “They do not reflect the core values that are the very foundation of the State of Israel. The party might conceivably gain enough votes to enter the next Knesset, and potentially even become part of the governing coalition.”

On Wednesday, the AJC was one of a number of mainstream American Jewish groups that did not respond to the Forward’s request for comment on the merger of the Kahanist party Otzma Yehudit with the national religious party Jewish Home, likely guaranteeing the Kahanists a presence in the Knesset.

Among those that did condemn the party merger on Wednesday were the Anti-Defamation League and the Union for Reform Judaism.

In its statement, the AJC said that it “does not normally comment on political parties and candidates during an election,” but felt “compelled to speak out.”

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A request to form a Jewish club at a British university was only approved by a narrow vote of the student body, with more than 200 people voting against it.

The proposed Jewish Society at the University of Essex had to be approved by the student union, which had recently approved clubs like the “Pokemon Go Society” and the “K-Pop Society.” But only 64% of students voted in favor of approving the Jewish group’s formation, with 36% - comprising more than 200 students - voting no.

“Jewish societies, of which over 60 exist on UK campuses up and down the country, provide a space for Jewish students to celebrate their culture and identity,” the country’s Union of Jewish Students said in a statement. “The fact that some students at the University of Essex deem it fit to vote against that is quite simply shocking.”

The statement also pointed out that a computer science lecturer at the university, Maaruf Ali, had campaigned on Facebook against the formation of the group.

The Jewish Chronicle reported that Ali had also posted memes on Facebook questioning the number of Jews who had died in the Holocaust, and claiming that the Mossad was connected to the January 2015 Islamic terror attack in Paris.

A spokesperson for the university, which has more than 15,000 students, told the BBC that the school had a zero-tolerance policy toward harassment and was investigating the matter.

A merger between two top-polling centrist parties is posing a major challenge to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ten-year hold on the office, the Times of Israel reported.

After talks that lasted through the night, Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz agreed that their two parties — Yesh Atid and Israel Resilience, respectively — would merge for the upcoming election. The deal stipulated that, if elected, Gantz would be Prime Minister first, for two-and-a-half years, and then Lapid would take over.

Gantz is a former IDF Chief of Staff. Lapid, a former journalist, was Israel’s finance minister from 2013 to 2014. The merger agreement also added Gabi Ashkenazi, another former IDF Chief of Staff, to the merged slate.

“For the first time since 2009, we have a competitive race for the premiership and this is the result of the emergence of this new centrist force,” Yohanan Plesner, president of the non-partisan Israel Democracy Institute and a former member of the Knesset, told TOI.

The latest polling average compiled by the Israel Policy Forum predicted that Israel Resilience and Yesh Atid would get a combined 30 seats in the 120-seat parliament — the same amount as Netanyahu’s Likud.

The merger talks, long in the works, had stalled over the issue of who would be prime minister and for how long. Gantz’s Israel Resilience has been polling ahead of Yesh Atid, and Gantz reportedly wanted to secure the Prime Minister position for the duration of the term.

The decision came down to the wire, with 5 p.m. Thursday as the deadline for official entry into the April 9 elections.

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The Israeli right-wing party Jewish Home merged on Wednesday with a small extremist party led by followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, all but guaranteeing Knesset seats for the extremists.

Kahane’s party was banned from running in Israeli elections in 1988 for racism, then banned entirely in 1994 under anti-terrorism laws. Two Kahanist groups, Kahane Chai and Kach, are currently designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S. Department of State.

According to Haaretz, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised top positions in the next government to Jewish Home leaders if they merged with the small extremist party Otzma Yehudit, or “Jewish Power,” which is led by three prominent Kahanists.

Parties must get at least 3.25% of all votes to gain entry into the Knesset. Had the two parties run separately, they likely would have split votes and risked falling under the electoral threshold and not making it into parliament at all, weakening options for Netanyahu to forge a coalition on the right.

The prime minister cancelled a meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin in order to usher through the deal, according to the Times of Israel.

One Otzma Yehudit leader, Baruch Marzel, was the secretary of Kahane’s party Kach in 1984, according to the Times of Israel. Another, Michael Ben-Ari, has been denied entry to the U.S. due to his ties to Kahanist groups, the Times of Israel reported.

The Jerusalem Post reported that multiple Jewish Home members had threatened to quit the party list if the merger went through.

Meanwhile, the leader of Meretz, an Israeli left-wing party, said that they would seek to get Otzma Yehudit disqualified, according to Haaretz..